After Mallika Sherawatsigning on Kamal Haasan's Dashavatharam comes the news that she will do an item number in Ashwini Ram Prasad's new film Preethi EkeBhoomi Melidhe. The film will also launch director Prem as a hero.

Prem, who has had a string of successes in his last three films, was the director of last year's blockbuster Jogi.Tamanna, who recently appeared in the Tamil film Kedi,is the heroine.

R P Patnayak has already composed the music for the item number to be performed by Sherawat. Ram Prasad says Mallika insisted on hearing the song before signing the film. She has allotted dates in November, and the news doing the rounds is that she has demanded Rs 45 lakh for the six-day shoot.

Deepika Padukone not doing Tamil film

Gowtham Menon had earlier toldrediff.com that Deepika Padukone would do his next Tamil film, which he had planned first as Chennayil Oru Mazhakalam with Surya and Asin in the lead. Menon was to start the film under a different title in September, but it was not to be.

The latest news is that Deepika has withdrawn from the film. "Yes, it is true she is not doing the film," Menon says.

The reason cited by Deepika was a lack of dates, but it is well known that her Hindi film, to be directed by Farah Khan and pairing her with Shah Rukh Khan, will start only in December. Anyway, the fate of the film itself now hangs in the balance.

Menon says, "I am not sure if I will do the project or not. At present, I am busy with the final parts of Silanthi (starring Sarath Kumar and Jyothika)."

To the question of whether Jyothika calling it quits after marriage will affect the box office performance of his film, Menon replied in the negative. "I don't think her getting married will affect my film in any way."

Huge opening for Aishwarya

Indrajith Lankesh's Aishwarya, starring Upendra and Deepika Padukone, has got a huge opening in its first week in all major centres. The distributors of the film are believed to have collected a whopping Rs 80 lakh in the Bangalore area itself -- the highest for an Upendra film so far. Collections in other distribution areas in Old Mysore and Northern Karnataka have also been very good.

Trade analysts feel it is too early to call the film a block buster though, as a number of big Kannada films are lined up for release in coming weeks. One big factor that can help the film is Dussera as, in the past, films released prior to Dussera have benefited immensely because of school and college holidays.

Mohanlal the Photographer

2006 has been a fantastic year for Mohanlal; he came out of the superhero image and experimented boldly. But he doesn't call his latest films experiments, saying he has never planned anything in his career as an actor. "I never planned to do films like Tanmatra, Vadakkumnathan, Rasathantram or Keerthichakra, they just happened. Nothing is in our control, good films just happen."

If he played a government employee in Tanmatra, he was a Sanskrit professor in Vadakkumnathan, an army major in Keerthichakra and a carpenter in Rasathantram. Now, over the past month, he has been deep in the jungles of Wayanad, in his words, "far away from civilisation," acting as nature photographer Dijo John in Photographer, a film being made by scriptwriter Ranjan Pramod.

The rumour doing the rounds in Kerala is that, one day, Mohanlal -- in a hat, with cameras dangling from his neck -- parked his bike outside the Press Club in Kozhikode and went to the first floor without anyone recognising him, while cameraman Alagappan canned the shot from a distance!